Despite reports to the contrary, plans for the new 250 acre park between the Trinity levees are moving forward, and they are doing so within the parameters established by the Army Corps of Engineers and the city's 2003 Balanced Vision Plan.

Well, that's not entirely accurate. As Brent Brown, director of the Trinity Park Conservancy, is at pains to emphasize, "The park is not just between the levees. The park extends to meet the city."

So much is clear from a pair of enormous models, one the size of an apartment, the other a dining table, presented to some 300 members of the public invited to an information session on Thursday evening at Old Dallas High School.

They present a verdant park of sinuous, terraced landscape forms interspersed with ponds, pools, wetlands and the filament that is the Trinity itself. A fingerlike island sits at its core, with a path that will take visitors just below the level of Santiago Calatrava's hooped Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge. "To be that close to the infrastructure, that's an incredibly exciting walk to take," says Liz Silver of landscape architects Michael van Valkenburgh Associates.

As exciting as what is within the levees, are the plans for what will go on top and adjacent to them. Two large overlook parks — one on the west and the other on the ease side — provide views into the levees and access from the city while providing amenities like restaurants, playgrounds, sports facilities and performance spaces.

Darren James, a Trinity Park Conservatory board member, left, listens while Elizabeth Silver, a member of the design team, talks while looking at a model of Harold Simmons Park on display at Old Dallas High School in Dallas, Texas on April 25, 2019.

(Robert W. Hart/Special Contributor)

"These are substantive urban park spaces with amenities that the park in the floodway needs," says Brown. By placing them on top of and beyond the levees, the spaces are not subject to inundation.

The toll road remains a thing of the past, but there is a small road to provide visitor access and parking spaces. It genuinely meanders.

These models are more suggestive of what the park could be than final plans for it. They present broad strokes but not fine details. The design of a major urban park is an evolving process, and this design still has a good ways to evolve.

Visitors look at a model of Harold Simmons Park on exhibit at at Old Dallas High School in Dallas, Texas on April 25, 2019.

The presentation comes at a moment when the park plan is under renewed scrutiny prompted by a recent meeting of the government body supervising the project. Concerns were raised during that meeting that the plan might not meet the requirements of the Army Corps or the Balanced Vision Plan.

The park designers reject these assertions, noting that they are working closely with the Corps, that their designs have been preliminary, and none of their work has been rejected. "Like any project, there are the technical challenges to get through to get to construction," says Brown.

"We are following models developed by the Army Corps," says Tim Dekker of the environmental engineering specialists LimnoTech. "The current iteration meets the 'no rise' criteria." That means that if implemented, the current design would not push water above the limits on the levees allowed by the Army Corps.

"The forms in the floodway are very precisely shaped by the outcomes of the flood modeling," says Silver.

A certain skepticism about a major capital project in a floodplain is warranted, but critics and opponents will have to take the plan and its architects seriously and avoid the baseless ad hominem attacks.

Those who would say Dallas can't build a major riverfront park will have to explain why it is impossible here, yet the Van Valkenburgh team accomplished exactly that in Tulsa, Okla., St. Louis, Pittsburgh, New York, and Columbus, Ohio — all to great acclaim.

The next review of the park is due in August. It would seem everyone has a great deal of work to do before then.